méi
noun HSK 5 #13,682

Meanings

  1. 1 coal

Characters

Examples

HSK 3
Zhōngguó shì shìjiè shàng zuì dà de méi shēngchǎn guó.
China is the world's largest coal producer.
HSK 6
Méikuàng gōngrén de gōngzuò hěn xīnkǔ.
Coal miners' work is very hard.
HSK 7-9
Yǐqián dōngtiān yòng méi qǔnuǎn.
In the past, coal was used for heating in winter.

Tips

usage
煤矿 (coal mine), 煤气 (coal gas), 煤炭 (coal as commodity) - these are the most common compounds with .
memory
has (fire) on the left and (certain/some) on the right - the 'certain thing' associated with fire.

Components

radical
huǒ
fire
The fire radical on the left tags as something burned - coal exists as a fuel, defined by combustion. It indexes with the fire family: burn, boil, smoke, roast, charcoal. Every fuel and heat-application char carries or its variant .
phonetic
mǒu
a certain (here phonetic)
supplies the sound mǒu → méi, just an initial-and-tone shift. The picture of (sweet) over (tree) - a sweet plum - has no semantic role here. Same phonetic series links to matchmaker, plan, berry, all sharing only their reading.

Stroke Order

méi